Conversations Matter

Just thought I would share this link, taken from Chris Anderson's blog yesterday. An interesting approach to frustration with PR practitioners...and I'm sure it isn't the first time someone's posted a list like this and blocked all of the folks who are on it. But is this kind of reaction cool? Is it a smart move by Chris or a cruel one? To some, it's amusing and a situation of "what goes around, comes around." For others, it's a power play by someone who should expect to get deluged with a mixture of relevant news, standard announcements and a far-fetched Hail Mary, since he's a high-profile author and editor of a very popular magazine. What do you think? Right or wrong? Funny or not?

I dare say that one of the most amusing and helpful blogs that appears on the blogroll of nearly every Matter employee is The Bad Pitch Blog. My only complaint is that the posts aren't more frequent (as if I'm one to talk!). But honestly, each time that Richard or Kevin do add an entry it is one that is thoughtful, provocative or just plain hilarious. Today's entry is very short and sweet--but it's a great reminder of how we can all get a better grasp of what's going on in the PR world and in the greater realm of the ever-nebulous "Web 2.0." The message is simple: if you want to learn about something, experiment with it. I can't say it any better than they did--so I guess I won't try.

There is one caveat, however, and that is I refuse to experiment with each and every social networking site that is launched on a daily or weekly basis. At some point, enough has to be enough! Besides...I've been a Facebook snob for a few years now and it seems to do the trick.

These days, it seems I can't check my Bloglines account without reading something about how great Facebook is.

The thing is, if I'm reading it via my Bloglines account, that means its from a source I deem respectable and worthwhile. Couple that with the 'friend' requests I've gotten from my own network and I have to believe Facebook has some there there. So I've been asking myself what has taken me so long (in Web 2.0 time, at least) to get on the train.

Frankly, I think it's the name. I haven't taken it seriously to this point because all I can think of is those books you'd get in college with photos of the incoming freshman class. While that was obviously the idea when the service was first launched, there is clear momentum for Facebook as a tool for professionals.

I find this interesting from a branding/PR/marketing standpoint. A natural knee-jerk reaction would be to change the name of the company/service to better reflect what it is and aspires to be. On the other hand, there is already significant brand equity in the current name.

Normally, I'm not a big fan of name changes (a lot of time, effort and money spent on a final product that is often worse than the original!), but I wonder if the opportunity cost (in potential users like me that aren't giving Facebook the attention it warrants) outweighs the current brand equity.

This morning one of the more interesting newsletters in my inbox was iMedia Connection's daily marketing newsletter, including an article called "Memo to Brands: Fear the Wiki." In the brief piece, a professor of marketing and e-commerce alludes to the dangers that sites like Wikipedia present to branding efforts by enabling others to "screw up the message and muddy the brand image that firms meticulously try to construct online."

But wait...isn't the whole challenge behind PR and marketing is that you don't have complete control over the message, as advertisers do? There's a myriad of benefits to giving up a little control, perhaps most important is the added credibility your brand gains from media placements, analyst reports, blog postings and reviews that are not paid for. In that sense, sites like Wikipedia offer you an opportunity to gauge how well your efforts are doing--are consumers buying into your message? Do you even have the right one?

And it's not as if marketers and brand managers don't contribute to wikis, too. In fact, here at Matter we've used wikis as internal tools to increase productivity when drafting, sharing and editing documents or pitches. They're fantastic for brainstorms. What's more, since so many people now see Wikipedia as a go-to source for information, it's a marketers duty to be aware of what other folks are writing on his or her company's Wikipedia entry. More than that, there's an opportunity for you to write in it yourself, provided that you're presenting factual information, correcting inaccuracies and backing up any claims with relevant, credible sources.

Too often marketing and PR is seen as an "us vs. them" when it comes to communicating with the masses. If you're willing to stand behind an organization or a product, you should be willing to engage in an honest conversation with the media, potential customers, current clients and yes, even competitors. That way, the carefully crafted messaging becomes a vehicle, not an end-result. How others view and perceive your brand will become the real metric...and that, my friend, is what translates into real business results.

Having experienced more than four years of consistent growth, and with expectations that the great work we do will continue in the years ahead, we’re taking the first steps toward expanding our company’s presence on the west coast -- in this case with plans to open a physical office and add local staff. (It helps, too, that we already have several clients based in the Bay Area – all of whom are excited about the initative!)

As in any successful business -- but especially PR -- having the right people is essential. PR Week is the first media outlet to which we’ve turned to find experienced people. I encourage everyone to share this regional office leadership opportunity with qualified colleagues: www.PRweekjobs.com

For Matter, based on our track record the time for this expansion is just right. More importantly, so is the greater technology and business environment. We’re excited at the prospects and we look forward to extending our record of success (and look for more blog entries about our progress in the months ahead).

GigaOM has an interesting post about Google's investment in 23andMe, and whether or not there a conflict of interest involved (or multiple conflicts of interest). The post does a nice job providing the details, but the ultra brief summary is that the co-founder of 23andMe is Sergey Brin's wife.

As you can see from the GigaOM comments (and using your own common sense!), the issue is open for debate about whether or not there's a real conflict here.

But from my perspective, that's beside the point.

If I were Google, I'd avoid this deal like the plague, if only because of the potential perception of a conflict. (Remember, this is the 'do no evil' company!) Even if this deal makes strategic sense (which it does), as the GigaOM piece points out, there were another of other similar companies Google could by where there'd be no potential for conflict.

Reputation needs to be treated as one of a company's top assets. Yes, even to the point of affecting corporate strategy. While it's easy to dismiss any negative "PR" Google might get around this as a drop in the bucket, it is yet another chink in the armor of a company that has reputation and PR to thank for its dominant market position.

No, the title of the entry does not refer to the late, great TV show of the same name...but rather, it's the question that seems to plague journalism these days. Criticism abounds for perceived conflicts of interest due to the structure of most media conglomerates--nothing new, and an issue we have been sorting out for the past decade or more. But given the news of News Corp.'s unsolicited bid for Dow Jones earlier this week, our attention again is turned toward this issue. We can debate all day about whether the WSJ would remain the holy-grail business newspaper under Murdoch's ownership (especially since others are reporting that the paper is losing some steam due to its online subscription model, anyway).

But another story really got me thinking about media ownership, conflicts of interest and the impartiality of journalists (aside from Jeff Jarvis' post this morning, which was thought provoking, to say the least). PC World Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken resigned over a story he planned to run that was killed by the publisher--due to concerns that editorial was being too harsh on products or companies that also happened to be advertisers.

On one hand, it's a clear win for McCracken (he gets to hold onto his integrity AND just earned a lot of cred for sticking to journalistic principles). On the other, it begs that same question--who's really the "boss' behind every article, feature or breaking news brief that is pushed as a must-read...and how are our clients' chances of landing in those same stories affected by the business side of media?

From what I’ve read, Steve Jobs is sticking to the iTunes knitting and leaning away from the idea of offering online music subscriptions on Apple’s iTunes website. To me, it’s crazy that an alternate music solution was even considered seriously – if it ever was. According to yesterday’s Reuters article related to this topic, via iTunes, Apple has sold more than 2.5 billion songs since the company first launched the service in 2003. (Read that again: Online consumers used their hard-earned dough to PURCHASE more than 2.5 billion songs via iTunes in the past 4 years.) Call me crazy – or naïve, or something worse – but I don’t see why the subscription-based approach could better Apple’s business. At best, they are moderately diversifying the hugely popular iTunes product portfolio…and if the seemingly unbelievable volume of songs SOLD on iTunes since its inception is any indication, consumers are doing just fine buying their music.

We, like so many others, often use this blog to advocate certain positions about the impact Web 2.0 (or new media or social media or whatever the "right" term is today) is having on the PR profession. As is the nature of blogging, this has been generally done in a piecemeal way, often in reaction to a certain meme or news event.

Last week, we completed our response to an RFI for a major prospect. One of the questions was "How is Web 2.0 (for lack of a better phrase) changing your services and agency model?"

Answering this question forced us to (finally) articulate our point of view in a cohesive manner. But we thought it made sense to do this not just for a particular prospect, but for the world (or that sliver of it that reads this blog, anyway!). Below is our virtually verbatim response, edited slightly for length and confidentiality.

What do you think about...well, what we think? (And I fully reserve the right to amend this position as we learn more about this crazy new world...)

Web 2.0/new media/social media/social networking/wisdom of the crowds/Web 3.0

Call it what you will, but we have a sneaking suspicion this Internet thing is going to be big…

All joking aside, it is undeniable that Web 2.0 is already having a strong acute impact on PR and will, over time, redefine what PR is. (We actually believe that to be true of Web 2.0’s impact on business overall, but that’s another discussion.)

We are also mindful to temper our enthusiasm with a dose of reality.

Let’s start with a favorite of the Web 2.0 pundits – statistics. For the sake of discussion, we’ll assume for a minute that some statistics are actually true. In a study you are likely familiar with, Knowledgestorm and Universal McCann surveyed 3,900 B2B technology buyers to determine the influence of new media on this audience. One-third of those surveyed said they access and share blogs frequently, while 27 percent claim that podcasts have influenced their purchase decisions.

It’s not unreasonable to think “Wow! This stuff is huge. All engines full thrust; damn the torpedoes!” But the fact of the matter is that while this study does show the growing importance of new media, it also demonstrates that the majority of folks aren’t “there” yet. (Granted, we are by nature ‘words people’ but we’re confident enough in our math skills to point out the obvious: the flip side to this survey is that two-thirds of respondents don’t access and share blogs frequently and 73% don’t claim that podcasts have influenced their purchase decisions.)

Contrary to what Stowe Boyd and Robert Scoble claim, Matter’s view is that new media tools and techniques have a growing place in PR’s bag of tricks, but “just blog it” is not an effective total communications strategy.

All that said, the way Matter works with clients and the work we do for clients is evolving thanks to Web 2.0. Even if the marketing benefits never come to fruition (that already isn’t true, but let’s just say), social media tools are proving remarkably useful in increasing efficiency and productivity and making our staffers more rapidly and fully informed on trends and news. (Personalized homepages, purpose-built del.icio.us pages, RSS feedreaders and widgets are used extensively internally and increasingly with clients as more effective ways of finding and sharing information.) As described in the [CLIENT] example above, we are also taking advantage of these tools to make us better practitioners of “traditional” PR and media relations.

Regardless of when the adoption of certain tools reaches the mainstream, one thing is certain: the fundamental principles driving the development of these cool new tools are here to stay. Customers have chosen to eschew the old, one-directional, company-to-customer model in favor of conversations where they are active participants in a collaborative process.

In my daily scanning of various blogs and industry books, I came across this entry on TechCrunch which quickly captured my attention. It seems the folks handling Microsoft's PR mistakenly sent a briefing backgrounder on Wired editor Fred Vogelstein...to Fred. Yikes. Having merely skimmed the document itself and not digging too deep into this story, I can't say whether this is an all-out "PR crisis"...except for the fact that the briefing materials contained some not so-flattering remarks about Fred's interview tactics and writing style. Considering he now knows exactly what these folks think of him, it's not exactly an ideal relationship-builder.

I guess my initial reaction to this is "don't put those types of things on paper!" and that briefing sheets should focus more on tactics and key messages for clients to drive home, that the reporter is looking for, and less on information on the reporter itself. Those thoughts should be shared during a prep session, mock interview or even a brief phone call to go over the materials and make sure everyone is ready for the call.

What are your thoughts on this?